The 18-year-old new mother, Dahab Hamdy, was charged with belonging to a “terrorist group” and joining an unauthorized protest, but according to her husband, Ashraf Sayed, at the time her arrest she was on her way to the doctor when she passed near a protest rally by supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, Ahram Online reported Saturday.
Her order of detention was renewed three times, each for a period of fifteen days, said the report.
Hamdy’s case angered many after she gave birth on Thursday via a caesarian section, and a photograph of her, while handcuffed to a hospital bed, with her newly-born baby next to her went viral on social networks.
In a phone interview on Friday, her husband Sayed told anchor Mahmoud Saad on Nahar TV channel that his wife remained handcuffed while she was inside Al-Zatoon hospital in Cairo, and was unable to breastfeed her infant child.
However, an official Egypt’s military-installed interior ministry claimed that Hamdy was getting “full medical care” and the photo of her handcuffed (with the baby) “might have been taken while she was being transported to the hospital.”
The National Council for Human Rights has requested an investigation into the photo of Dahab handcuffed, said lawyer Ragia Omran via Twitter on Friday.
This is while 16 human rights organizations released a statement on Wednesday demanding swift investigations into what they described as increasing and shocking allegations of torture and sexual assaults against those currently in detention by Egypt’s military rule.
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